GREEN EUROPEAN WOMEN CONFERENCE ON THE PRELUDE OF THE FOURTH
WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN IN BEIJING

STRASBOURG 18/19 MAY 1995

organized by the Green Group in the European Parliament

Strasbourg, 19 May 1995

Declaration by Green Women in Preparation for the Beijing
Conference

We, Green women from 11 EU countries gathered together at the
European Parliament in Strasbourg, welcome the Fourth World Conference
on Women in September as an important step in the light of the
efforts, networking, prac-tical and political work that many governments
and thousands of NGOs have taken up to organize and prepare the
WCW. Those efforts aimed at creating a strong impulse, sharing
visions and analysing the diverse needs of women worldwide for
the advancement of all women, using the WCW as a catalyst for
regional and global implementation of equality policies and all
measures contributing to the empowerment of women.

Unfortunately, many obstacles to a successful WCW have arisen:

1) Although the decision to hold the WCW in China was originally
made after the Chinese government promised to meet UN requirements
of free access, accessibility and sufficient facilities, the facts
show that the Chinese government has until now taken unacceptable
restrictive measures regarding formal accreditation and rules
of access as well as distant location and inadequate facilities
for the NGO forum. We strongly doubt that the hopes placed by
women in this conference can be realized . We demand that this
conference should take place in conditions of free speech and
respect for human rights, we demand active promotion and facilitation
of consultation and negotiation between NGOs and governmental
delegations.

If by the 15th of June the Chinese goverment fails to satisfy
the specific requirements which, as host-country it agreed with
the UN, we demand that participating governments should boycot
the Beijing- Conference and require from the UN to relocate both
conferences to an alterative venue in an alternative Asian country
or to Australia.

2) The language, recommendations and actions called for in the
New York draft Platform of Action for the Fourth World Conference
on Women actually jeopardize progress already made. They fall
far short of what was already agreed at the major UN conferences
in Rio (Environment and Development), Vienna (Human Rights), Cairo
(Population and Development) and Copenhagen (Social Development).
There are reasons to fear a conservative backlash against women's
achievements so far in empowerment, autonomy and strong leadership
of women. We urge all our governments not only to strongly defend
the progress made in these past conferences, but also to move
ahead by making implementation proposals and defining budgets.

In our two-day meeting in Strasbourg, we concentrated on the following
critical areas: Economics, Women's Human Rights, Reproductive
Rights and Sustainable Development.

Globalization of the economy

Alongside successes in recent decades, the situation of most women
in the world is deteriorating. The reasons are to be found in
the globalization of the economy, dominated by neo-liberal macro-economic
policies and, especially in Western Europe, the preoccupation
with deregulation. This deregulation is allowing regression to
lower, substandard levels of wages, health and safety protection,
social security and public services, as well as of employment
rights and conditions. These developments are endangering the
concepts of equal opportunity, social welfare and solidarity.
While State is withdrawing from many economical decisions by privatisation,
multilateral corperations are monopolizing uncontrolled power,
thus worker's rights and especially women's rights are not safegarded.
That is why different strategies are needed starting from obliging
TNC 's to adopt codes of conduct to consumers organisation and
implementing control-mechanism.

In Western Europe, women's access to the labour market has increased
considerably, but the majority of women still earn unequal wages
in part-time or flexible jobs with insecure working conditions,
leaving them dependant on a breadwinner or the state. The reorganization
of the labour market entails the restructuring of working and
caring: long overdue are parental and home- care leave, tax and
security systems shaped according to individual needs rather than
to the breadwinner principle. Overdue is the achievement of adequate
child care and welfare facilities, creating jobs instead of cutting
public spending in the service area which only increases the burden
of women's unpaid work.

Considering that the countries of Eastern and Central Europe,
with their new freedom, have opened up to economic liberalism,
entailing rising unemployment for women (and men), reduced state
services and great risks from a deteriorating environment; that
the region is still suffering from serious conflicts and three
years of war, in which crimes against humanity are continuing
to take place, leaving women and children in a desperate situation;
it is of great importance to strengthen aid and cooperation (not
by diminishing development-budgets) and to intensify efforts to
contribute to peace in the region and give women an important
role in the peace-process. (This attention to European neighbours
should not be at the expense of development aid budgets.) Transformation
of Eastern and Central Europe to democratic, economically and
ecologically safe regions is of utmost concern and importance
and must be supported by governments, special aid programms, NGOs
and political committed to strengthening the role and contribution
of women. Adequate healthservices and compensation of damage caused
by environmental policies and other areas of the environment such
as nuclear testing and production and chemical and biological
testing must be provided.

The testing, manufacture and use of conventional and nuclear weapons
remain a deadly threat to people and the environment. Nuclear
testing must be stopped and the production of nuclear weapons
and fissile material banned. The dismantling of all nuclear facilities
and weapons must be carefully monitored.

As a step toward drastic reduction of arms trade and military
expenditures, we call on all UN member states to set aside a defined
yearly percentage of their budget, namely at least 10 %, to be
made available for conflict prevention in situations of acute
economic and social crisis. Arms trade as well as the use of anti-personnel
mines must be combatted effectively. We support the call for the
investiture of a UN Conflict Council with the mandate to initiate
and promote violence-free processes in order to start dialogues
and work out non-military solutions. Half the members of this
Council should be women. A UN World Peace conference should be
organized for the year 2000 in order to elaborate and promote
further strategies for non-military conflict resolution.

After years of "development", the non-industrialized
countries of the South are left with a crushing burdened of debt,
devalued resources, and mounting social, environmental and economic
crises. We urge the governments of the EU and the whole Western
world to acknowledge their own accountability for the unindustrialized
South and to make sure that development programms and structural
adjustment programms be conditioned by clearly defined debt- reduction
measures and the creation of employment in health care, social
services and environmental protection in order to reduce poverty,
especially among women in the South, respecting at least the framework
of the "20/20" initiative, with the donor countries
increasing their contribution to 1% of GNP.

Feminization of poverty is a fact in both Southern, Eastern and
Western European countries, and urgent actions are needed to counter
this trend: all actions to reduce poverty must involve the women
themselves and include gender impact assessment. Those actions
and measures must be accompanied by concrete financial commitments
to enable implementation. Overcoming gender-based segregation
on the labour market and redistributing working and caring (paid
and unpaid work) must be aims running through all programmes and
legislation. With the globalization of the economy the whole world
is hijacked by the neo- liberal economic logic. No solutions can
be found by proposing correction only, however fargoing they might
be. Instead care for people and environment should be on the top
of the political agenda and translated in societal rules and legislation.
Women worldwide should cooperate to formulate their own values
and work on strategies to implement them.

Universal Women's Human Rights

Universal Women's Human Rights include political, civil, economic,
social and cultural rights. While traditionally, the human rights
focus was mainly on violations perpetrated by the State, women
have succesfully fought for recognition of gender-based violence
as a political issue, thus including it within the human rights
framework: States cam be held responsible for tolerating or even
committing gender-based violence, including violence perpetrated
by individuals or within the family. Women's human rights have
to be enforced and promoted actively. Although violence against
women was only recognized as a violation of human rights in June
1993 in Vienna in the UN World Conference on Human Rights, the
international legal instrument to protect women's human rights
is the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women CEDAW, adopted in 1979. We urge all UN member states who
have not signed the convention to do so in 1995 and call for an
optional protocol in order to strengthen the monitoring system.
By strengthening the Committee in charge of receiving complaints
from individuals and States, we can make governments accountable
for their own violations of women's human rights and for the protection
of those rights. A strengthened position and increased funding
for the Special Rapporteur on violence against women are needed.
The role of women's NGOs in combatting violence must be recognized
and promoted by goverments.

We also urge removing all existing reservations to the CEDAW:
the human rights of women and children are an inalienable, integral
and indivisable part of universal human rights. Reservations based
on cultural, traditional practices should be removed. We strongly
object to the selective defense of cultural and religious traditions
in order to justify discrimination or violence against women,
such as female circumcision, or, in the Western world, excuses
for the abuse of migrant women on the pretext of respect for culture,
or any such justification of prostitution-tourism and child prostitution.
We condemn Christian, Islamic and other fundamentalisms that deny
women's autonomy and justify violence against women. We welcome
the actions of Amnesty International, notably in defense of the
rights of women during war and conflicts, of women activists,
disappearances, mass-rape and torture of women. It is urgent to
bring women's human rights into the mainstream of the whole range
of UN activities. Violence based on gender is aggravated in conflict
situations; for women refugees, it is often a reason for seeking
political asylum. This motive should be given clear recognition
in asylum procedures. For women migrants in an increasingly racist
climate in the EU, independant residence permits are needed for
their protection, along with support and permits for the growing
number of victims of trafficking in women in order to combat the
criminal practice and to help them rebuild their lives. We welcome
the EU efforts to advance the rights of lesbian women and call
for strong defense, including the right of asylum in case of State
violations of their human rights.

Reproductive Rights

Women's sexual and reproductive rights were an important issue
in Cairo 1994, but need to be defended against conservative religious
forces as well as against narrowing the issue to population control.
We need policies that enable women to regulate their own fertility.
All women in South and North need affordable, comprehensive health
care and education, free and voluntary access to safe contraception
methods and to legal abortion, treatment and prevention of sexually
transmitted diseases including HIV/ AIDS. Women in different parts
of the world have different needs, which must be recognized. Each
women should be the one to decide whether, how many and with whom
she bears and raises children. Dumping of contraceptives, as well
as forced sterilization, abortion and involuntary prenatal diagnostics
are serious violations of women's human rights; such methods must
be outlawed as forms of population control. The population issue
has to be dealt with in terms of inequalities in the dividing
up and sharing of economic and ecological ressources as well as
an issue of social development, instead of applying the label
"overpopulation" unilaterally to the fertility of poor
women in the South. Sustainable development In the Rio Conference,
the Agenda 21 was adopted and the EU as a whole and its Member
State governments made financial commitments which they have yet
to fulfill. Unsustainable pattern of production and consumption
driven by the rich industrialized North are degrading the environment
and the depleting natural resources on a global scale. This toxic
and degraded environment is severely damaging human health and
the natural ecosystems on which we all depend. The greatest detriment
is suffered by those communities with the least economic power.
Women as food providers and managers, as farmers and heads of
households, with fundamental responsibilty for the health and
welfare of their children, must be at the forefront of developing
sustainable economies. Gender-assessment should be a condition
for development programmes. Women's role is too often reduced
to managing waste and the dealing with the calamities caused by
intolerable environmental risks. Women must be participants and
leaders in planning and decision-making in matters of waste management,
infrastructure, mobility and transport as well as in choice and
development of technology, production structures and consumption
patterns. Genetic engineering of food must be controlled and risks
assessed. For genetic manipulation of life-forms, strict laws
must be enacted and enforced, especially with respect to the integraty
of women's bodies and their (unborn) children. The law on Eugenics
as adopted in China in October 1994, with regard to the 'regulation'
of the rate of possibly handicapped children, is an example of
a law that violates (women's) human rights and has to be denounced
as such.

The role of NGOs has been reinforced in the last decade, and their
tasks broadened. We support this development, but insist that
women's organizations and the social movement for equal rights
must be given political and financial support.